Promiscuity is Natural, Right?

LiveScience.com - Animal Sex: No Stinking Rules

Biggest Playaz
Animals flout established rules when it comes to the game of love and sex. In fact, the animal kingdom is full of swingers. Bonobos are highly promiscuous, engaging in sexual interactions more frequently than any other primate, and in just about every combination from heterosexual to homosexual unions. Mothers even mate with their mature sons (Everyone: Eeeeewww!). Bonobo societies “make love, not war,” and their frequent sex is thought to strengthen social bonds and resolve conflict. This idea could explain why bonobo societies are relatively peaceful and their relatives, chimpanzees, which practice sex strictly for reproduction, are prone to violence.
Photo Credit: H. Vannoy Davis © California Academy of Sciences.

The post for this site is being sent around as an email forward. Apparently, the point that people are trying to make is that the animal world is so much more enlightened and relaxed about sexuality than human beings are. "Hey, animals actually benefit from promiscuity. What's our hang-up?"

First of all, the claim made above that Bonobo societies "make love, not war," and that sexual promiscuity strengthens social bonds and resolves conflict is a completely unscientific statement. How could such a claim be proven? I suppose one could intervene whenever members of the Bonobo society began to sexually engage with one another and see if sexual tensions led to conflict. However, the claim made above is not based on any research at all. It is an interpretation of a correlation. Perhaps Bonobos are simply more temperamentally placid.

Secondly animals can "throw out the sexual rule book" exactly because they are animals. For animals, sex is at most a physical pleasure. Animal sex does not communicate love. Animal sex does not promise commitment. Animal sex is not an act of vulnerability and trust. Animal sex is boring. Human sexuality adds all of these elements that make sex an act of love. Animals do not "make love, not war" because without an intellect to give sex meaning and a will to make sex a choice, animals are incapable of love in the human sense, and are really incapable of war (they may conflict and battle, but they do not sustain battle into war that involves entire societies).

If human beings throw out the sexual rule book, we will become Bonobos - simple animals with active but meaningless sex lives.

Everyone: Eeeeewww!

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